International Black Sea University

As the world's population grows, the energy demand continues to rise due to advancements in technology and the impact of globalization. The finite nature of traditional energy sources has accelerated the shift toward renewable energy, particularly in developing countries where environmental degradation and declining quality of life are significant concerns. This study delves into the interplay between urbanization, carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth, and renewable energy production in Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation member states, providing new insights into the energy market. By using annual data from 1995 to 2020 and advanced panel cointegration tests, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of renewable energy for developing countries. The findings show a substantial and long-term relationship between urbanization, emissions, growth, and renewable energy production. These findings have important implications for policymakers and underscore the critical role of renewable energy in mitigating climate change in developing countries.

To build an effective and safe learning community fighting with bullying is critical, which can be done via increasing students’ emotional intelligence. This paper aims to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence and bullying rate, and how an effective bullying prevention program can be organized. For this study, the qualitative research design was chosen. A convenience and snowball sampling were applied to hold the interview with school teachers and psychologists. Eight teachers and two psychologists from different schools were interviewed via the zoom.com platform. The findings revealed that, for most teachers, the term ‘emotional intelligence’ was relatively new. However, psychologists were well aware of this concept. All respondents were well aware of the concepts of bullying (victims of bullying, bullies, bystanders, and victimization). Most importantly, all respondents believed that the development of emotional intelligence can help prevent or at least diminish the bullying rate. Developing emotional intelligence should become one of the priorities for reducing the bullying rate among students. Bullying prevention/intervention programs should have a complex nature.

The idea behind the spillover effect of FDI on economic growth is based on the idea that multinational companies can bring technological innovation and rich knowledge to host countries. Therefore, FDI plays a vital role in technological innovations. This study aims to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the technological innovation of BRICS countries from 2000 to 2020. This study uses the latest econometric techniques, such as the cross-sectional dependence (CD) test, second-generation unit root tests, panel cointegration tests and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test. For long-run run estimation, this study uses the augmented mean group (AMG) panel estimator and the common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) estimator for empirical analysis. The findings of the study show that foreign direct investment (FDI), trade openness, economic growth, and research & development expenditure positively impact technological innovation in BRICS countries. Also, the model's long-term causality and lagged error correction term (ECT) are significantly negative. Suggested policy measures will be helpful for BRICS economies in boosting technology innovation through FDI.

Spreading fake news and disinformation is one of the global challenges over the last years. It is a challenge for Georgia too. This acute problem was also current at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when a number of misinformation appear in the social media as well as in the traditional media, regarding the origin and spread of the coronavirus, especially in Facebook which is the most popular social network in Georgia. A lot of fake news was spread and is still being spread in the post-pandemic period too. The Goal of this research paper is to explore the attitudes of Georgian Facebook users, specifically what kind of fake news and disinformation they met about Coronavirus in social media, how to identify them, how much they tried to verify them, how to explain their spread, how to fight them, etc. In order to explore this issue a social constructivism framework is used. As for the main research method, this study is based on the qualitative approach. For this purpose, the method of in-depth interviews - with Georgian active internet users – has been conducted. The respondents are doctors, journalists as well as representatives of different academic fields, who possess media literacy skills.

The energy sector is a crucial pillar of the economic development of every nation. In developing countries, renewable energy deployment is scarce; consequently, the government and private sectors are exploring efficient energy resources. This research aims to scrutinize the linkages among value orientation, utilitarian benefits, collectivism, the reason for adoption, attitude toward renewable energy (RE), and adoption intention in the renewable energy context. The study analyzes survey data from 359 Pakistani consumers using solar panels for households. An approach called structural equation modeling is applied to evaluate hypotheses. Empirical findings suggest that value orientation positively and significantly influences the reason for the adoption of RE and attitude toward RE. Similarly, the utilitarian benefit positively and substantially affects attitude toward RE. Moreover, collectivism and reason for adoption are substantially and favorably related to attitude toward RE. The study’s findings also show that customer intentions to use renewable energy are favorably and substantially influenced by RE attitudes. The research has contributed to the enhancement of future avenues for scholars and professionals are provided by the literature on renewable practice.

A nation's financial development is necessary to execute green economic recovery techniques, one of the most highly regarded strategies for guaranteeing long-term financial development at the national level. The paper examined the link between financial stability, industrial structure, and resource utilization efficiency using the 2005–2020 entropy weight technique and the coupling coordination degree assessment method. Researchers have discovered a link between industrial structure and resource efficiency, although that link is not as significant or elastic as first thought. China's industrial structure has changed, but multiple industries remain predominant, negatively influencing natural resource usage efficiency. Natural resource utilization efficiency improves as a result of economic advancement. Promoting investment and financial sector redistribution may be used to invest scarce resources in sectors with greater efficiency and economic performance, resulting in the optimization and revamping of conventional businesses. On the other hand, foreign direct investment greatly enhanced natural resource use efficiency than government investment behaviour as a control variable. The significance level test for urbanization factors failed, and the coefficient value is tiny, suggesting that China's urbanization cannot considerably increase resource consumption efficiency. Efficiency in using natural resources depends on the amount of research and development money invested in the company. The study presents a counteraction and recommendations based on the empirical findings for sustainable growth.

Energy is a necessary source of economic development and social prosperity, linked with primary production and consumption activities worldwide. In this regard, solar home systems (SHSs) are beneficial in two ways, i.e., saving vitality overheads and meeting the energy demand of small enterprises. The current study aims to evaluate the performance of adopting SHS to develop the small-scale industry in Pakistan. An inclusive questionnaire survey was conducted, and respondents were selected using the purposive sampling method. As a step further, we scrutinize the moderating role of awareness and understanding of technology between the node of adopting SHS and the monetary enactment of small-scale industry. We authenticate the model using a sample of 357 respondents by applying the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results indicate that low-cost energy through SHSs has a progressive and substantial linkage with the demonstration of small-scale industry and enhances the quality of energy supply in Pakistan. Similarly, awareness and understanding of SHS significantly moderate the relationships between enhanced energy supply through SHS, the quality of SHS, and the performance of the small-scale industry. These findings provide a valuable guideline to the regulation developing authorities that more attention is needed to focus on SHS to further improve the performance of small-scale industry.

Taking the data of 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2018, the spatial dynamic Durbin model is applied to exploit the influence of energy internet (EI) and digital economy (DE) on green economic growth (GEG). This paper confirms that: Not only does the GEG in the previous phase significantly contributes to the GEG in the subsequent phase, but the GEG in the local region also significantly contributes to the GEG in the adjacent area. EI and DE can significantly promote GEG, and their interaction term has a positive effect on GEG. A significant non-linear nexus is observed for the influence of the EI and the DE on GEG. Specifically, the impact of the EI on GEG is characterized by a non-linear single threshold with increasing positive marginal effects, while the impact of the DE on GEG is characterized by a non-linear double threshold that first inhibits and then promotes GEG.

This paper reflects on some Arabic terms, previously noted by scholars, of small‐scale monument types, which have a symbolic and semantic conflation of ‘cooking fire’ and ‘permanent occupation’, such as raḍfa, jamara, ʾaṯfiya and rabaʿa. The paper discusses more terms that confirm this conflation and widen it to include the concept of tribal protection, as a parallel with the pre‐Islamic practice of the ‘fire of alliance’, described by classical Muslim writers and alluded to in Ancient South Arabian inscriptions. The association of fire terminology with tribal protection concepts appears to be related to the idea of food‐sharing alliances.

The study focuses on NATO’s nuclear policy in the face of Russia’s aggressive policy and threats from the Kremlin. The author examines the history of the nuclear policy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since the founding of NATO, as well as key aspects of the implementation of NATO’s nuclear deterrence policy. Part of the study focuses on the geostrategic aspects of NATO’s nuclear triad and covers the three components of the nuclear triad: strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). It also examines specific aspects of the use of nuclear systems by the three main nuclear powers of NATO, namely the USA, the UK, and France, and the main geopolitical rivals of the Alliance, specifically the Russian Federation, taking into account Russian aggression against Ukraine, and the People’s Republic of China.

This study examines how environmental regulation supports the development of a green economy through green technology innovation. We also study the impact of new regional environmental regulations and their different types on the emergence of new initiatives. However, past research has ignored the effect of economic growth on environmental regulation. Accordingly, we predict that 29 developing nations with strong environmental policies will benefit from the new regional environmental regulations. Our findings demonstrate that new environmental regulations are significantly and positively correlated with low levels of economic development. Other economic development growth results have a weaker but still significant association and are not significantly associated with lnFDI transformations, with the emergence of environmental regulation start-ups. The generation of gray knowledge also significantly affects both gray and green environmental regulations. Additionally, we discovered that stricter environmental regulatory frameworks negatively impacted the start-up of new businesses across various sectors, particularly the fossil fuel industry. Moreover, we distinguish between the high and low impacts of environmental regulations in various cities and offer applicable strategies for emerging economies.

The transition to full online teaching format has posed a number of challenges of journalism higher education. The goal of this research is to show Georgian journalism teachers’ attitudes towards online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. To reach this goal and explore this issue a social constructivism framework is used. The main research questions: How effective is this process? What are the strengths and weakness of full online learning? What opportunities of the development are arisen? This study is based on the qualitative approach and a semi-structured interviews method is used for this research. The interviews (n=17) were conducted among journalism professors, different Georgian media schools. This study was carried out from 20 June till 20 October 2021. According to the results of this study, there are a lot of challenges facing during the full remote classes but nevertheless there are a number of development opportunities. At the end of the research the author suggests certain recommendations for media schools.

This study explores the relationship between the business environment, economic growth, and funding sources of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to determine the relevance of the business environment for technological SMEs. The agency theory was used as a theoretical framework to describe how asymmetric information among SMEs and borrowers affects SMEs’ financial decisions as well as China’s investment climate and GDP growth. A binary logistic test was used to assess the financing of SMEs and business development for economic recovery after the pandemic in China. Data from the World Economic Forum and Development Bank were examined. According to the results, funding (e.g., formal and informal) under the banking structure and tax regulation may potentially boost standard credit choices and lower casual credit choices. Consequently, it has demonstrated a considerable impact on GDP growth for technologically small and medium-sized enterprises. This study is the first to examine the asymmetric information and institutional theory regarding funding a café. These findings are essential for business leaders and policymakers concerned with the financial health of small and medium-sized enterprises. Policy implications for important stakeholders are also included in this study.

This paper is occasioned by the current events in the crude oil markets throughout the Covid pandemic time. The study analyzes the evolving nature of crude oil cost unpredictability caused by the variations that influence the crude sector throughout the current contagion. Every day's dataset is within the first month of 2020 and 30 December 2021 were measured by applying VAR and GARCH models. The results corroborate that the current contagion has adverse effects on the crude sector, primarily in two ways. It resulted in the headwinds for demand and cut international demand for crude oil, increasing uncertainty for major advanced and developing nations. Next, it resulted in output headwinds as the pandemic caused hydrocarbons conflicts among the leading crude supplying countries. The two headwinds seem to have caused the more than necessary crude unpredictability. Moreover, it was found that the United States output, total requirements, and crude-leaning demand shocks adversely affect the supply unpredictability of the United States and the extractive sectors. The findings depict that crude price instability responded significantly to the contagion caused by crude headwinds. Specifically, the study recorded the effect of uncertainty because of these headwinds beyond financiers' concerns about crude price instability. This study indicates that spillovers do not have meaningful forecast data, igniting critical debates concerning the relevance of the spillover indicator for predicting at minimal sampling occurrence.

Pakistan has experienced energy poverty, as most of the people live in rural areas. Poor people are stereotyped as collecting the firewood and using the unclean energy sources to meet their residential energy needs. As a result, respondents in the provinces with the highest rates of energy poverty set a high priority on this research. Structured interviews were used to conduct the research in rural parts of Punjab and Sindh provinces. Due to the apparent country’s large population and rapid industrialization, conventional energy sources cannot meet the country’s present energy needs. Results revealed that energy poverty in rural areas had exposed the residents to security problems such as health dangers, fire accidents, time poverty, financial poverty, illiteracy, and other issues at various levels of severity. As a result, alternative energy sources must be explored. This research aims to determine the best renewable energy choice for Pakistan’s rural areas. In terms of pricing, life duration, operation, and maintenance costs, the results show that solar energy is the best renewable energy source for Pakistan. The key barriers that continue to promote energy poverty have been identified. Finally, the study suggests policy recommendation for public and private sectors to overcome energy related barriers to alleviate energy poverty in rural areas by utilizing maximum solar energy.

This research provides an in-depth understanding of cotton production in Benin. The analysis explored the effects of cotton production on economic growth using a vector error correction model (VECM). Prior to the VECM, a descriptive analysis was conducted on a time series database collated over 56 years (1965–2021) from national and international organizations including World Bank, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Accounts. Depending on the availability of the information over this period, the data were trimmed down to enable a better overview of the trend for variable of interest. Thus, the review of the trend for agricultural land (hectares) for cotton observed from 1965 to 2021 revealed that the trend evolves over the years in three different patterns, while the yields demonstrate four patterns over the same period. For the VECM analysis that permits to understand the long- and short-term relation, the time bound covers 30 years from 1990 to 2019 given the availability of data for all the variables used for the model. The findings highlighted that a strong and positive connection is found between cotton export and economic growth and a long-term relation between the human capital and the economic growth in Benin. A rapid human capital development will increase quality of the employment generation, and the country’s economy will adjust upward. Furthermore, a short-run coefficient unveils feedback necessary in a relative level of investment to bring back the economic growth to equilibrium. From these findings discussed in this study, the government of Benin is commended to diversify the production of cotton through a town target policy.

Purpose: Communicative behaviour as a state of relationship which influences bilateral feelings, needs, and thoughts for more unambiguous and open communication (Ivanov & Werner, 2010) can affect the brand image. Correspondingly, communication from the side of the universities toward students through social media has a significant role. Facebook is a powerful communicational channel. It effectively and efficiently took control of the business sector, advertising sector, and furthermore, educational realm. It has an enduring influence on the way how people communicate, and as time passes, it becomes an essential part of their lives. The article presents the behaviours of Georgian higher educational institutions in social media, especially on Facebook, and the attitude of the existing or potential students towards communicative behaviour of HEIs. The findings show what kind of influence does communication in Facebook has on customer perception and correspondingly brand image. Study design/methodology/approach: Considering the sensitivity and nature of the research two types of studies were selected. Observing the behaviour of the universities directly on their Facebook pages was selected as the leading type of the research, since the content, as well as their responsiveness and engagement in further communication, is clearly visible visually. In addition, we have decided to listen to the customers themselves. Because of this reason focus groups of existing and potential students were selected to talk about their expectations and the reality in terms of communicative behaviour of the universities. Findings: The results of both, observation as well as focus group research showed the lacks and lapses of communicative behaviour of Georgian universities on social media, specifically on Facebook. The most crucial ones were detected to be the following: delays in distributing valuable information, content not so much significant and interesting for students, indirect answers to student queries or ignoring at all. Originality/value: Considering the globalizing landscape branding has become crucial for the universities for different reasons. Not only attracting potential students but also for retaining the existing ones and being exceptional they have to follow modern trends. Communication, direct or indirect, being one of the most significant for branding deserves more attention. The value of the current research is showing the expectations of the existing and potential customers and presents the gaps between “what is done” and “what should be done”.

The terrestrial magnetosheath is characterized by large-amplitude magnetic field fluctuations. In some regions, and depending on the bow-shock geometry, these can be observed on several scales, and show the typical signatures of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Using Cluster data, magnetic field spectra and flatness are observed in two intervals separated by a sharp transition from quasi-parallel to quasi-perpendicular magnetic field with respect to the bow-shock normal. The multifractal generalized dimensions D q and the corresponding multifractal spectrum f(α) were estimated using a coarse-graining method. A p-model fit was used to obtain a single parameter to describe quantitatively the strength of multifractality and intermittency. Results show a clear transition and sharp differences in the intermittency properties for the two regions, with the quasi-parallel turbulence being more intermittent.

Digital green innovations are being implemented in manufacturing to help organizations achieve sustainability by adopting sustainable development practices (SDPC). However, little is known about the impact of the information management process (IMP) on organizations’ digital green innovation. To address this gap, we devised a multidimensional framework based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory that serves as a basis for sculpting how the IMP captured and sustained organizational digital green innovation via SDPCs. 533 respondents from big and medium-sized manufacturing businesses in China were surveyed, and data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The study makes numerous significant findings. Firstly, the SDPC’s dimensions (environment, economic, and social) are considerably improved by the IMP’ dimensions (acquisition, dissemination, and application). Secondly, SDPC’s dimensions are critical for attaining organizations’ digital green innovation. Thirdly, SDPCs’ implementation mediates the linkage between the IMP and organizations’ digital green innovation. Our findings suggest that investing in and implementing cutting-edge technology and sustainable practices are critical for long-term success. Still, soft issues, such as organizational information management, are equally critical in today’s information-based economy. Finally, in light of the study findings, we present theoretical and managerial implications.

This paper analyzes the effect of financial deepening on poverty in the emerging Black Sea market economies with new generation causality analysis techniques utilizing panel data from 1996 to 2020. The econometric method of panel data is applied to the six emerging economies. It can be seen that the causal relationship between domestic loans to the private sector (DPS) and per capita household consumption expenditure (HCE) is significant in Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine. In addition, a bidirectional causality relationship is observed in Georgia. Romania, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine are countries where the causality between HCE and DPS is significant. It is concluded that DPS increases per capita HCE and thus effectively reduces poverty.